Ousmane Sow was born in Dakar in 1935. He grew up in Reubeuss, one of the poorest areas of Dakar, where he received a very strict education and was given responsibilities at a very young age by his father. His father was a Muslim with liberal views and a man of great generosity, from whom Ousmane inherited a sense of ethic, independence, and a free spirit. When his father died, he decided to leave for Paris. Without a penny on him, he was embraced by France and was even welcomed to sleep in police stations. While working at various odd jobs, and having given up his interest of taking formal courses at the Ecole des Beaux Arts, he chose to obtain a diploma in physiotherapy.
Although he had been sculpting since his childhood, it was only at the age of fifty that Ousmane Sow made sculpture his full-time profession. Drawing upon his experience of physiotherapy, he applied his magnificent sense of human anatomy to his work. During the evenings, he would transform his medical consulting room and his apartment into sculpture workshops. He would then destroy or leave behind the works he created.
Up to the time of his first exhibition, which was organized by the French Cultural Center in Dakar in 1987, nothing was known of his work, apart from an excerpt from an animated film which portrayed small sculptures. Only six years after this first exhibition in Dakar, he exhibited his work at Dokumenta in Kassel, Germany. In 1995, the Seated Nouba and Standing Nouba closed the exhibition organized in Venice at the Palazzo Grassi for the Centenary of the Biennale.
In 1984, inspired by Leni Riefenstahl's photographies of the Noubas of Southern Sudan, he began to work on wrestlers of this ethnic group and produced his first series of sculptures, The Nouba. In 1988, he created The Masai, in 1991 The Zulus, and in 1993 The Peulh.
In 1991, he built his house, based upon a design from his imagination. The house, including it's walls and tiles, is made from the same media from which he makes his sculpture. It also includes symbols representing the Sphinx and as such, presages his future series of sculptures entitled The Egyptians.

In the courtyard of this house, he produced The Battle of Little Big Horn, a series of thirty-five pieces. The pieces were first exhibited in Dakar in January of 1999 and served as a preview to the Paris exhibition on the Pont des Arts, which attracted over three millions visitors.

Ousmane Sow has always sculpted without a model and has developed his own secret medium. His medium is a characteristically subtle alchemy, in which he allows a number of ingredients to macerate over the years. This medium becomes a work in itself. He applies this material onto a framework made of metal, straw and jute, a process which allows the opening of the door to the unforeseen. This artistic approach represents a fundamental african expression.

His life and his work are concurrently deeply anchored in his country. He cannot imagine himself sculpting anywhere other than Senegal. Although he has lived for more than twenty years in France, he would never be enticed to leave his africa soil.